Does Security Glitch Mean Less Heat for Wikileaks?

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The Web site Wikileaks [7] has been drawing criticism for publishing 90,000 classified documents about the war in Afghanistan [8], some of which reveal the names of Afghan citizens who have provided information to the U.S. The Obama Administration has said this could endanger the lives of those informants. But it turns out that prior to their publication, the documents had already been widely disseminated across a kind of Pentagon [9] classified Internet called "SIPRNet," which makes information widely available within the defense and intelligence communities. SIPRNet was set up to encourage greater information-sharing among defense and intelligence agencies, according to former CIA director Michael Hayden [10]. The posting of the classified documents on SIPRNet means the real identities of the Afghan sources were already available to thousands of people, albeit people who have security clearances themselves. The leak of the documents to Wikileaks calls into question the overall security of the system, and begs the question of whether Wikileaks has highlighted the failings of this system.